The Green caldron - University Library

December, 1957
Sandburg's retirement did not mean a slackening-up in writing or work-
ing. It simply meant that now he had more time to compile information for
his next biography on Lincoln, to lecture at colleges or meetings, and to write
more poetry. He moved his family to a lakeside home called "Chickaming"
at Habert, Michigan, where the poems. The People, Yes, published in 1936,
were written. By 1935 Carl started the tremendous task of sorting through,
discarding, arranging, and compiling his notes for the next volumes of Lin-
coln's biography. He was fifty-seven years old. His sun had passed its
zenith.
SUNBURST AT TWILIGHT
Although Sandburg was now in the sunset years of his life, these were
some of his most creative years. For four years he worked on the four-volume
biography, Abraham Lincoln: The War Years. During that period he
still found time to go on lecture tours. With the help of his family, friends,
and business associates, the biography was published in 1939, seventy-fo'ur
years after Lincoln's assassination. The manuscript, containing 1,175,000
words, one quarter of a million more than the Bible, was written on 5,400
sheets of paper and stood three and a half feet high.^^ This work was the be-
ginning of Carl August Sandburg's ''sunburst at twilight."
Following this publication he was honored by many schools, colleges, and
literary foundations. The War Years was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in
history. ^^ Among the many awards received were honorary doctorates of litera-
ture from Harvard, Yale, Lombard College, Knox, Lafayette College, Dart-
mouth, Northwestern, New York University, and Wesleyan University in
Connecticut.^^ He was voted a member of the Natoinal Institute of Arts and
Letters, made a member of the editorial board of National Labor Defense
Council, and awarded a medal for his Lincoln biography by the Roosevelt
Memorial Association.-*^ Sandburg was a definitely established figure in the
literary world, and the eye of the public was on him.
At the outbreak of World War II, he again wrote articles for newspapers,
doing his bit in the fight for peace. In 1942, Home Front Memo, a collection
of pamphlets, speeches, broadcasts, newspaper columns, legends, poems, and
photograph texts, was made available to the public. One of the popular news-
paper columns included was "The Man with the Broken Fingers," a startingly
gruesome and shocking poem about ''Norwegian will pitted against Nazi will,"
which showed how a man was cruelly made to die a thousand deaths unless
he betrayed his country.
The Sandburg family moved to Connermara Farm near Flat Rock, North
Carolina, where they now live. There Paula Sandburg is in charge of the
248-acre farm, her nationally-known and respected goat herd, and all book-
keeping, with the help of her two daughters, Margaret and Janet.^^
After working on it for four years, Sandburg released Remembrance Rock
in 1948. This 10,067-page historical novel contains much of the American
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